spec.txt

   1 # ircpipe
   2
   3 sets up an irc connection, and not much more.
   4
   5 ## on connection
   6
   7 - [x] connect
   8 - [x] tls (optional cert validation)
   9 - [?] sasl plain (untested)
  10 - [x] set user and nick
  11 - [x] wait for motd/001-message
  12 - [x] optionally, do an initial join
  13
  14 ## in the background
  15
  16 - respond to server pings
  17 - keep track of when we last received an irc mesasge; if t > $timeout, send ping ourselves.
  18         (first implementation can just send a ping every $timeout (milli)seconds)
  19         (should $timeout be the time between last message and send-ping or between last message and ping-reponse?)
  20         - different timeouts:
  21           - ping interval
  22           - connect timeout
  23           - time between sent message and received response
  24           - send/recv block: invalid, due to polling
  25
  26 ## interfaces
  27
  28 - read from stdin, write to stdout
  29 - cli for setting timeout, user/nick, server info, ...
  30   - netcat-like (everything but host[{: }port] optional
  31   - how to specify tls?
  32   - how to specify auth?
  33     - relatively secure password handling!
  34
  35
  36 ## minor TODOs
  37
  38 - check if port is valid
  39 - irc_poll: handle poll() EINTR (don't exit on nonfatal signal received)
  40
  41
  42 ## future todos:
  43 - flood protection!
  44
  45
  46 ## dropped features (patches accepted)
  47 - nickserv: freenode and hackint support sasl, efenet neither. rest don't care.
  48 - sasl cert: don't care for it
  49 - optionally use socket instead of stdin/stdout?
  50 - checking responses to NICK, JOIN, CAP-REQ, AUTHENTICATE
  51   for now, we're just assuming everything went ok.
  52   - NICK/USER
  53      ok: 001 (checked, to block further commands)
  54      err: 432 433 436 437 <nick>
  55   - JOIN
  56      ok: JOIN <chan>
  57      err: 471 473 474 475 403 405 437 <chan>
  58   - CAP REQ/CAP END
  59      ok: CAP <nick?> ACK
  60      err: CAP <nick?> NAK
  61      err: 421
  62   - AUTHENTICATE
  63      ok: 900 903 <nick>
  64      err: 902 904 905 908 <nick>
  65 - maybe allow HOST:PORT (nc doesn't)
  66   - maybe allow HOST +PORT and/or HOST:+PORT for tls
  67   - maybe allow irc://HOST:PORT and ircs://HOST:PORT
  68 - what to do when nick is taken
  69   - use random nick
  70   - use fallback nick (append '_')
  71   - allow specifying alternate nicks
  72   - exit (this is what we do now on receiving the numeric error response)
  73
  74 ## discarded ideas
  75 all of these would require modifying the streaming data, which is more trouble
  76 than it's worth. these could be implemented as external filters, though.
  77 - -C flag to translate CRLF to LF (from server) and LF to CRLF (from stdin)
  78 - -A flag to strip ctrlchars (formatting, colors, etc) from stdout
  79 - enforce max line length (512 bytes, including CRLF) by splitting PRIVMSG
  80
  81 ## for responses
  82
  83 we need to check and handle multiple responses to commands we've send:
  84 - ping: pong (everytime, everywhere. keep current hack)
  85 - sasl: cap-ack, 900+903 or 90x (when authenticating, during setup)
  86 - (after connecting/authenticating): 001, nick-in-use (everytime, during setup)
  87
  88 the server may send unrelated responses in-between - including pings - and we
  89 want to enforce a timeout in which we expect the response (2000ms).
  90
  91
  92 essentially, we send a command, then block until we receive a response or an error.
  93 commands we send that we need to wait for are:
  94  - PING
  95     ok: PONG :<whatever>
  96